The Gap into Conflict

You may be wondering why Republicans seem so adamantly against Obama’s healthcare bill when it seems, superficially at any rate, to offer millions more people a chance of decent health care. The Democrats love to portray the Republicans as selfish people obstructing the provision of healthcare to millions of their fellow Americans.

The use of taxpayer dollars to fund abortions has been supposedly banned until now. “Planned Parenthood” (in reality planned non-parenthood) have been looking for a way to circumvent the Hyde Amendment which bans the use of taxpayer funds for this purpose. Obama’s healthcare bill apparently ditches the Hyde Amendment, enabling abortion to become a state-sponsored “essential” service.

In New Zealand, of course, we are mystified at the fuss. After all, our tax dollars are industriously used to kill foetuses virtually every day of the week.

Americans are understandably less keen on this use of their tax dollars.

The debate on the use of tax payer funds for abortion was long over in New Zealand by the time I arrived in this country. I may not like my tax used this way, but I simply have to lump it (after all, it is not as if tax is voluntary). But Americans still have this battle to fight and they should make sure that this does not slip under the radar of the collective American conscience. People who vehemently disagree with abortion should not be made to pay for it with their taxes. Long ago, Americans fought for “no taxation without representation”. If the majority of Americans disagree with funding abortions (and this is by no means certain) then Obamacare will mean exactly that – taxation without representation.

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